Wheat Germ Oil

Wheat germ oil is rated Caution at Low confidence, and the 5 out of 5 that follows it around the internet is a number we can find no measurement behind. Fulton's 1989 table has no wheat germ oil row. It has wheat germ glyceride, at 3 — a transesterified emulsifier made from the oil, printed in his emulsifier section rather than among the oils. We identified no comedogenicity assay of the oil itself, in any species, on any scale. The Caution records what acne clinics do with it, not what anyone measured.

What it is

The oil pressed or extracted from the germ — the embryo — of the wheat kernel. On a label it is Triticum Vulgare (Wheat) Germ Oil, or the synonymous Triticum Aestivum (Wheat) Germ Oil. The Cosmetic Ingredient Review assessed it in 2017 among 244 plant-derived fatty acid oils and concluded it safe in the present practices of use and concentration. Formulators reach for it as an emollient and skin-conditioning agent, and for its unusually high tocopherol content, which is also why it is sold as a stand-alone facial oil. One material has to be kept separate from it, because the whole of this page turns on the difference. Wheat Germ Glycerides is a distinct cosmetic ingredient, CAS 68990-07-8. The CIR's 2025 safety assessment of wheat-derived ingredients defines it as "a mixture of mono-, di-, and triglycerides produced by the transesterification of Triticum Vulgare (Wheat) Germ Oil," and reports that it contains 30% to 40% monoglycerides. It functions as an emollient and, in practice, as an emulsifier. It is made from the oil. It is not the oil — a triglyceride oil that has been broken apart and rebuilt with free hydroxyls on a third to a half of its glycerol backbones is a different substance with different surface behaviour, and the cosmetic-ingredient nomenclature treats them as two entries because they are two things.

Why we rate it Caution

We rate wheat germ oil Caution at Low confidence, and the confidence is Low because there is no assay underneath it. The rating reflects what acne clinics do, not what a study found. Start with the table, because this is where the error lives. We hold a verbatim transcription of all 220 rows of Fulton's 1989 Table I, read visually off a 400dpi render of the journal scan. Searching it for wheat returns exactly one row — "Wheat germ glyceride, 3" — and that row does not sit in the oils. Fulton's section VI, "Oils," runs cocoa butter, coconut butter, hydrogenated vegetable oil, sesame, corn, avocado, evening primrose, mink, soybean, shark liver, cotton seed, peanut, olive, sandalwood seed, almond, apricot kernel, hydrogenated polyisobutane, castor, hydrogenated castor, chaulmoogra, babassu, squalane, maleated soybean, safflower, sunflower, mineral oil. Wheat germ oil is not among them, and it appears nowhere else in the paper, in any table. The wheat germ glyceride row sits several sections away, printed between pentaerythrital tetra capra/caprylate and polyglyceryl-3-diisostearate, among the glycol esters, the glyceryl stearates and the ethoxylates. Fulton scored an emulsifier. The lists gave the score to an oil, and then, somewhere along the way, changed the number. Because the number did change. What circulates is 5, and 3 is what the paper prints. On Fulton's own key a 3 is "borderline" — 0 to 1 "is not considered significant", 2 to 3 is borderline, 4 to 5 is "considered positive" — so the row everyone is really pointing at, for a material almost nobody means, does not even reach his threshold for a positive result. A 5 has to come from a paper scored out of 5, and there are only a few of those. We hold the complete tables of two: Fulton 1989 and Morris & Kwan 1983. Morris & Kwan's 32 rows — seven lanolins, nine vegetable oils, eleven esters, five surfactants — contain no wheat germ oil either. And in neither table does any oil reach 5. Fulton's oils top out at 4, at cocoa butter and coconut butter; every 5 in his 220 rows belongs to an ester or an ethoxylate — isopropyl myristate, isopropyl isostearate, myristyl myristate, laureth-4, oleth-3. Morris & Kwan's nine vegetable oils top out at 3, at sweet almond. The number attached to wheat germ oil is higher than any oil scored in either of the two 0-5 tables we have read. Then there is the source that complicates this, and it is the reason the page is worth writing. In December 2025 JAAD Reviews published "Comedogenicity in cosmeceuticals," a peer-reviewed clinical review of the field from 1972 to 2025. Its Table I prints "Wheat germ oil — natural oil/emollient — rabbit ear assay (0-5 scale) — 4-5," with the note "consistently comedogenic in rabbit assay; minimal human validation." A peer-reviewed dermatology journal, in the last year, printing the number. So we went to see what it cites. The table is referenced to Morris & Kwan 1983, which has no wheat germ oil row. The sentence in the body — that cocoa butter, coconut oil, wheat germ oil and apricot kernel oil "were shown to produce microcomedones when applied to rabbit skin" — is referenced to Xie and colleagues (2024), which is a review of microcomedones as a treatment target in acne, not a rabbit-ear assay of anything. And the same Table I prints octyl palmitate at 4-5, where Morris & Kwan, the paper it cites, prints 2-3. The review is right about the state of the field — it concludes that no standardised comedogenicity test exists and that "non-comedogenic" is an unregulated claim — and its table demonstrates the point better than its text does. Peer review did not stop the number. It just gave it a better address. So what the rating actually rests on is a clinic list. Face Reality Skincare's pore-clogging ingredients list, read in full on 13 July 2026, names Wheat Germ Oil. It also names Wheat Germ Glyceride, on its own line, two entries apart. The list carries no scores, no method, no patient count, no citation, and no denominator. It is an assertion, and we record it as one. Caution is where an ingredient sits when clinicians avoid it and nobody has measured it.

What the evidence doesn’t tell you

We could find no comedogenicity study of wheat germ oil — no rabbit-ear assay, no human comedone count, in the corpus we searched and in the published literature we could reach. That is a bounded claim about our search, not a proof that no such study exists, and the distinction matters in both directions. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: this oil has not passed a test, it has simply never taken one, and Caution is the least-wrong call available rather than a verdict. If the assay were run tomorrow we would have no grounds to be surprised by the result either way. Safety data is not comedogenicity data, and neither of the two CIR reports that cover this material supplies any. The 2017 assessment of plant-derived fatty acid oils includes wheat germ oil among 244 oils and concludes it safe as used; its comedogenicity section reports exactly one comedogenicity study, and it is on Corylus avellana (hazel) seed oil, not on this one. The 2025 assessment of wheat-derived ingredients, which is where Wheat Germ Glycerides is assessed, runs to 27 ingredients and does not contain the word comedogenic once — we read the full text and searched it. That silence is not a clean bill of health. A safety panel that never asked about follicles has not answered a question about follicles. The glyceride's own 3 is not a spare number we can quietly hand back to the oil, and we are not going to. It is a 3 out of 5 for a transesterified partial glyceride, applied at roughly 10% in propylene glycol to the inner ear of three New Zealand albino rabbits, five days a week for two weeks, with follicular keratosis read under a micrometer. Fulton called that survey "not at all definitive but simply designed to stimulate research" and warned that the model is so sensitive that not everything which irritates it will irritate human skin. Whatever it tells you, it tells you about an emulsifier. The obvious argument for the defence is also one we are declining to make. Wheat germ oil is a linoleic-rich vegetable oil, and there is a literature suggesting that sebum in acne-prone skin is relatively depleted in linoleic acid. Reasoning from that to "therefore this oil will not clog a pore" is a mechanism, not a measurement, and reasoning from what a molecule ought to do is exactly how the numbers we correct on this site got made. We are not going to do it in the reassuring direction merely because it would be pleasant to.

Where you’ll see it

On a label it appears as Triticum Vulgare (Wheat) Germ Oil or Triticum Aestivum (Wheat) Germ Oil. It is used as an emollient and skin-conditioning agent, and is also sold undiluted as a facial or body oil. Wheat Germ Glycerides — the material that actually carries Fulton's 3 — is a separate INCI entry and appears where an emulsifying emollient is wanted; the CIR's 2025 assessment records it in colour cosmetics among other categories. Both names turn up on acne-clinic avoid-lists, which is where most readers will have met either of them.

Sources

Each source says what it actually is. Several widely-cited “sources” for comedogenic ratings are republishing the same 1989 assay, and counting them as independent agreement is how a thin evidence base gets made to look thick.

1. Fulton JE. "Comedogenicity and irritancy of commonly used ingredients in skin care products." J Soc Cosmet Chem 40:321-333 (1989) The rabbit-ear survey nearly every comedogenic score online descends from. Method — test material at roughly 10% in propylene glycol, applied to the inner ear of three New Zealand albino rabbits, follicles scored 0-5 for keratosis. Fulton's own key reads 0-1 "not considered significant", 2-3 "borderline", 4-5 "considered positive", and he described the survey as "not at all definitive but simply designed to stimulate research". Cited here for exactly one row and for one absence. The row — "Wheat germ glyceride, 3" — sits among the glycol and glyceryl esters and the ethoxylates, not in section VI, "Oils". There is no wheat germ oil row in Table I, nor in Tables II or III. We read all 220 rows visually off a 400dpi render of the journal scan, because OCR silently drops the numeric columns.
2. Morris WE, Kwan SC. "Use of the rabbit ear model in evaluating the comedogenic potential of cosmetic ingredients." J Soc Cosmet Chem 34:215-225 (1983) The other 0-5 rabbit-ear paper, and the earlier one — three rabbits, undiluted material unless stated, 14 applications, microscopic grading. It is not a republisher of Fulton; it contradicts him in print. Its 32 rows are seven lanolins, nine vegetable oils, eleven esters and five surfactants, and cited here for two things it does not contain — a wheat germ oil row, and any oil scored above 3. Its highest vegetable oil is sweet almond, at 3.
3. Starzyk T, Aust N, Schur N, Miller R. "Comedogenicity in cosmeceuticals — a review of clinical relevance, regulatory gaps, and future directions." JAAD Reviews 6:78-83 (December 2025) A peer-reviewed clinical review of the whole field, 1972 to 2025, open access, no conflicts declared — and the most recent place a reader can meet this number in a journal rather than on a blog. Its Table I prints wheat germ oil at 4-5 on the rabbit-ear scale with the note "consistently comedogenic in rabbit assay; minimal human validation". We read the full text to find out what stands behind that. The table is cited to Morris & Kwan 1983, which has no wheat germ oil row; the body sentence about oils producing microcomedones in rabbits is cited to Xie et al. (2024), a review of microcomedones as a treatment target rather than an assay; and the same table prints octyl palmitate at 4-5 where Morris & Kwan print 2-3. Cited both as a source of the claim and as evidence of how it travels. Its own conclusion — that no standardised comedogenicity test exists and that "non-comedogenic" is an unregulated label — we take seriously and quote elsewhere on this site.
4. Cosmetic Ingredient Review (Burnett CL, Bergfeld WF, Belsito DV, et al.). "Safety Assessment of Wheat-Derived Ingredients as Used in Cosmetics." Int J Toxicol 44(1_suppl) (2025); published online 8 November 2024 The final published expert-panel assessment of 27 wheat-derived cosmetic ingredients, and the source of the material-identity fact this page turns on. It defines Wheat Germ Glycerides (CAS 68990-07-8) as "a mixture of mono-, di-, and triglycerides produced by the transesterification of Triticum Vulgare (Wheat) Germ Oil" and reports that it contains 30% to 40% monoglycerides. Wheat germ OIL is not one of its 27 ingredients — the report notes the oil was covered by an earlier assessment. It is a safety document, and safety is not comedogenicity — we read the full text and the word comedogenic does not occur in it.
5. Cosmetic Ingredient Review (Burnett CL, Fiume MM, Bergfeld WF, et al.). "Safety Assessment of Plant-Derived Fatty Acid Oils as Used in Cosmetics." Int J Toxicol 36(3_suppl):51S-129S (2017) The expert-panel assessment covering 244 plant-derived fatty acid oils, wheat germ oil among them, concluded safe in the present practices of use and concentration. Cited for what its comedogenicity section actually contains — one study, on Corylus avellana (hazel) seed oil, applied to the pinna of albino rabbits. Not wheat germ oil. A safety conclusion is not a finding of non-comedogenicity, and this page does not use it as one.
6. Face Reality Skincare — "Pore-Clogging Ingredients List" An acne clinic's avoid-list, and the only thing our Caution actually rests on. Roughly eighty ingredient names, no scores, no method, no patient count, no citation, no denominator. It is an assertion someone typed, not a measurement, and it is one of the lists driving this whole category of belief. Read in full on 13 July 2026, and cited for one detail — it names Wheat Germ Oil and Wheat Germ Glyceride as two separate entries, both to be avoided. Only one of them was ever in a rabbit's ear.

Others in the same family

Oils behave similarly enough that the evidence for one is often wrongly read across to the others. These are its structural relatives, not a guess. What the evidence says about oils as a family ›

• Argan Oil Clear Low
• Avocado Oil Caution Low
• Castor Oil Clear Moderate
• Coconut Oil Clogging Moderate
• Corn Oil Caution Low
• Cottonseed Oil Caution Low
• Evening Primrose Oil Caution Low
• Flaxseed Oil Caution Low

Last reviewed 2026-07-12 · How we decide

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